Here’s tomorrow’s homework, done in vine charcoal as usual. Took me about 3 tries before my perspective was anywhere in the ballpark; was hard to get my brain to accept that my knee should be about as big as my head, because it’s closer to the viewer.

Oh, and in case you think I’m a narcissist for always doing homework drawings of myself, the assignment is always to draw from life (no photos), and I’m the only person I’m willing to ask to sit for a portrait. (Even then, it’s awkward.) But hey, if you’re volunteering…

Here’s the latest incarnation of the cartoon bear I’ve been toying with; he’ll likely be the main character in a comic strip contest I’m entering. He’s still too generic-looking, but I think I’ll just have to settle for something like this for now, if I hope to make the deadline.

On impulse at the art store, I bought a little plaster head, one that depicts a dude with his face muscles exposed. Here’s today’s practice.

Picked up a compass and started in on a new Bargue. Still made a few mistakes, but overall this is much closer than my first two attempts. I’ll continue working on this offline, but I’ll try to post something different here tomorrow, since I know these are a bit boring to look at.

So, somehow this turned out even worse than the first one. What’s interesting is that I plotted a lot more points on this one, triple-checked myself, etc. It was looking pretty good to me until I actually compared it directly.

As I drew this, I wondered if it would be kosher to use a compass instead of a string–seems logical, but I didn’t want to deviate too much from the first write-up I read. But today I came across another very helpful thread on the ConceptArt forums in which an instructor suggests a compass for one of the options, and walks a couple people through the entire process. So I’ll definitely be picking up a compass, so I can avoid the headache of trying to keep a thumbnail in the exact right spot on a slippery piece of thread.